Best Buy discounts BlackBerry PlayBook

If you're in the market for a BlackBerry PlayBook, head on over to Best Buy and have a look at the sale they are currently running. As pointed out in the forums, from now until Monday you can buy a 16GB PlayBook for $449 and a 32GB or 64GB for $549. We have also heard rumor in the forum of Staples sending out emails through internal sales reps offering the PlayBook at 50% off for 2 days only (Sept. 7th and 8th). This means 16GB for $249, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $349. If you have a Staples business account, you may want to contact your representative and see if this offer is available for you as well.

So now the speculation begins. Why the deep discounts on the PlayBook? Are retailers trying to clear out stock of the wifi version to make room for that elusive 4G model? Is it prep work for the PlayBook 2.0 relaunch? Is a sale ever really just a sale? Sound off in the comments, and let us know if you find any other great deals on the PlayBook.

I also suspect Playbook (even before the Touchpad fire sale) needed something to spur sales. Why RIM doesn't offer $100 off Playbook with any Blackberry activation or something I will never understand.

I really hope to see a permanent price cut to $399 (16GB) and a 10" intro in the next few weeks at $499 along with a 2.0 OS release. I have dream!!!!!!!!

Bridge will NEVER run as intended. Sorry to say - but bluetooth is the crappiest technology ever, or at least it was not meant for this type of data transfer... The odd bluetooth headset works alright, but beyound that I find it to be lousy (keyboards, mouse, speakers, printers etc etc).

Just picked up a 32gb this week from Staples with the $100 visa prepay rebate. A local grocery chain here has a deal where evey $50 you spend, you get 10 cents off a gallon of gas (up to 30 gallons). They were running a special last couple weeks where $50 gifts cards would get you 20 cents off a gallon. So $600 worth of Staples gift cards later, I have $1.20 off per gallon on my next fill up too. Now THAT'S serious money off the price of the Playbook!

$249 and I will get one - I personally can't justify any tablet for $400+ but at $250, I'd probably bite. Altho, I'd still be a little concerned about the small screen size since it would mostly be used for browsing

Ditto!!! I have the 64GB PlayBook and prefer it to any of the 10" tablets I have tested at retailers. The screen size does not matter in this case because its sharpness and clarity are awesome, additionally its size is actually perfect for most people, I have average size guy hands while my wife's hands are small, yet both of us love the PlayBook. I'm tempted to get another one at these prices.

The PlayBook's screen size doesn't bother me one-bit. I love its overall size and the fact its browser behaves much like my desktop. I use it for almost all browsing outside of my comps, as its size is just right for me to cary everywhere and I can tether it to my phone's 3G connection when I'm away from my wifi.

And just for reference, I also own an Asus Transformer, which is a great device all around and an iPad, which quite frankly sucks for most tasks, especially browsing.

Im glad I sold my 16gb Playbook for $350 just last week on Ebay that was perfect timing, because I would have had to sell it for about $150 to get anyone to bite on ebay, it was a tough sell @ $350 I had to relist it 3 times. I dont know what the speculative reason R.I.M or retailers are discounting the playbook but I believe anything not named Ipad should discount their tablets just to compete, Im waiting until theres a real competitor for the Ipad before I jump back into the tablet arena I bought a galaxy tab 10.1 and returned it in less than 24 hours, the android Tab is super buggy and it doesnt play well with Macs, the If only the playbook had some apps it would be the perfect Machine.

The dirty secret of sales--outside of traditional seasonal and lifecycle stuff--is they indicate weakness and a lessening of value. 50 percent?

FIFTY???

Four months into launch? A mere 120 brief summer days with several full blasts of national advertising all through the hockey playoffs and everywhere else?

That's simply grim. RIM is desperate to try to get some mo for this thing, and to get retailers to care. Pretend otherwise all you want, even as you've been made a fool for buying it at full retail and suffering the flawed OS updates and lack of application development for your troubles.

As for the minor stock uptick, speculators hoping for an acquisition or hoping it's oversold. Lotta bottom fishing out there. Check the volumes, not just the price, among other things.

This is scary. Once you do this, it's that much harder to get anyone to pay full retail ever again. They'll know to wait for the next capitulation.

are you kidding me? now, Im going to have to make a major decision whether to jump on this blackberry playbook deal or to just pass on it and wait for the 4G version. Im actually still waiting for the white playbook to drop and I haven't seen any updates in regards to that. does anyone know if they are still releasing the playbook in white? ;/

As a PlayBook owner I am sad to say that *if* Staples is truly going to start selling PlayBooks at half price I would have to conclude it's because it's not selling very well.

Don't get me wrong, I really like my PlayBook, but it really doesn't offer very much. In my opinion RIM has seriously dropped the ball. I mean, promises are nice and all, but seriously: where the heck is the email app? Where is the Android app support? Why do I want to slap the programmers at RIM every time I use the podcasting app? Why isn't there some way to move the cursor in the web browser?

If I wanted to but consumer electronics with a great start, a lot of potential, and a lot of promises I would travel back in time and buy some more Nokia phones. We all know how well they're doing. Now-a-days I'd sooner buy an Apple product than something from Nokia. At least with Apple I could move on to the "acceptance" step (Flash will never happen) instead of being stuck in the "anger" phase.

Reasons for this can only mean sales have been below expectations. Retailers would be really annoyed that they have to take markdowns on the PB only three months after launch to make room for a "new" playbook. Makes no sense.

I bought a Touchpad on the fire sale last weekennd at Best Buy. It's fine and the kids can use it but the Playbook is so much better. Aside from native e-mail and a couple of games, there is nothing I like better on touchpad. If you grab a Playbook for $399-$450, do it.

Much as I like the idea of getting the Playbook into the hands of more people, I am disappointed that we early adopters are left holding the bag as usual. I got a great price on my 32GB, but now the 64GB is even less.

Is autocorrection completely built into the OS yet? I hated that when I had the playbook that it wouldn't correct misspelled words throughout the entire OS. Typing on the web was a pain going back and correcting mistypes.

Staples is offering a $100 prepaid VISA Card rebate on all Playbooks purchased between 8/25 and 9/03. (Standard 4-6 weeks after mailing in rebate form, etc.) Just got back from demo'ing one. Really like it. Tempted, but if there's a $100 rebate this week, I think I'll wait it out.

A short test of prices to gauge the market. I think if they cut prices too far, then consumers might think the device was being discontinued. However, I would expect further price cuts in the next few months.

If a 4G PlayBook launches before the end of the year, it may come in near what the previous WiFi only version price was at launch. That would make the current small reduction just a step prior to bigger discounting. A next generation PlayBook is unlikely until mid 2012 after QNX phones launch.

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